First off, no link because I'm not trying to say 'blacklist this guy, he's sooooo mean', I just have an overall suggestion.

In a multi-day team game of mine I had something quite dishonest happen: There were two players who hadn't made their move within the allotted time, one from let's say team "A", one from team "B", we'll call them Allen and Billy, respectively. After a certain amount of time, another player from team "A" (lets call him Andrew), notices this. Rather than booting both of them, Andrew decides to only boot Billy, from the opposing team. Before noting why this is wrong of him, you have to realize what (I believe) the logic behind booting is: it is to speed the game up. "Andrew", in this game, did not speed the game up, rather, he misused a mechanic of the game to give his team an advantage.

In light of this problem, I'd suggest that it is madeso that you have to boot all players, if you want to boot any. Then, the meant function behind booting stays more or less the same, you can still boot slow players to keep games from taking weeks, but it also makes it so you can't misuse the system to help yourself.

I didn't see the feedback feature, so delete this if you'd like~

+1

according to me , every person have evil inside him...
what andrew did is normal because { booting enemy is easy but mind thinks 100 of the times before booting your own team-mate(which is strong and andrew knews that their team could not win without him )....

i think the situations andrew faced is : ( serial wise )

1.he got frutrated of waiting too much ....
2.he decided to boot all of them who did not took their turn till yet...
3. he opened boot window and moves his cursor toward the boot button to boot his own team-mate ....
4.he decides that he should boot enemy first as the time he will take to click boot button for the enemy , may be its possible that andrew's team-mate take his own turn in that mean time ....
5.andrew BOOTED enemy
6.now andrew thinks that let's wait for 1 more minute , may be his team-mate take his turn...
7.he finally decides to boot his team-mate ....
8.now his cursor is ON THE BOOT BUTTON
9.now andrew mind thinks 100 of times weather to boot or not ...
10.mind finally decides that NO NO NO ! as mind knows that if andrew booted his team-mate then their team gonna lose for sure :( {sad}
11.now andrew finally decides to decide that if he booted his team-mate then the game is over , and if he did not booted then there is a win

AND COnclusion : the evil of andrew did not wanted to lose ,
and andrew just closed warlight and gone to sleep {he waits for his team-mate }

i hope i explained the mechanics well .... ;)

sadly, that is many peoples mental dilemma... my personal mental dilemma is making sure that I boot the teammate and opponent at the same time, so that Irisk no chance of an unfair advantage... ofc' if I did, I would surrender..

To throw in another perspective, you (the other player on team B) have an equal opportunity to do the same thing.

Booting is part of the game, and even though personally I also disagree with what "Andrew" did, the system for booting isn't at fault.

emoose, the point being presented is not the fairness of the possibility.. but the fact that booting is designed to keep a game moving, and when used, should accomplish that goal.. in this case it was used and that goal was not accomplished, so the booting mechanism failed in it's duty, and was instead used to gain advantage.
having booting be for all players whom haven't sent their orders would expediate the game, thus completing the boots design, and then would only have said situations when a banking boot is implemented, in which the players decision is removed nonetheless

I have to agree with emoose. The active players on both teams had the same chance to boot the inactive players on either team. I don't think it's fair to criticize someone for not doing something that you hadn't done yourself (namely, booting "Allen").

As emoose said, booting is part of the game, and if it comes down to it, it's part of the strategy. If you don't like it, then you should play in games with only autoboots and no direct booting. You can't agree to certain rules in a game and then complain when those rules are enforced. That's a lot more dishonest than what "Andrew" did.

I have to agree with the OP and Perrin here. There are situations where the autoboot causes problems (someone asked for a few more minutes, or a known absense was taking place). A direct boot feature makes sense, instead of always relying on the autoboot. You also don't want to set the autoboot at a low enough timeframe to speed the game up, because it will almost always lead to a large number of boots over the course of 25-50 turns.

If you can't rely on the autoboot, then you need to rely on the direct boot to set a soft limit on how long people have to take their turns. Allowing the direct boot to be gamed in this manner causes all sorts of problems, which could easily be solved by direct booting everyone who is equally late.

If you can't stand the idea of booting the guy on your own team, then maybe you shouldn't be booting the guy on the other team?

while it's not a perfect analogy, "booting" = coup d'état.

Duke, this was a multi-day game, so people aren't going to be asking for a few more minutes, and if you have a known multi-day absence, you can set vacation mode when you leave. If you still don't like the autoboot, use the voting boot. Since everyone has to agree to boot someone, you can make sure that the OP's situation never happens. The problems you're worried about can already be easily avoided using existing options.

In fact, even using the settings in the OP's game, all the OP has to do is boot the other guy himself, and there's no problems at all. What this seems to boil down to is that you want the direct boot option for yourself so that *you* have the discretion of when to boot people or not, but you also want to complain when other people in the game exercise that same discretion. I can't really sympathize with that position.

The coup d'état analogy is interesting. Certainly a legitimate strategy in a real war if you can pull it off.

Again, I disagree with what "Andrew" did, so I'm not blind to where you guys are coming from.

Each type of booting has it's pros and cons, and when you accept the boot settings in a game, you accept the pros and cons that come with those boot settings.

Vote-to-boot is fair in many situations, since everyone other than the player being booted must consent to the boot. On the downside, this can be used by many weak players to easily eliminate a strong player.

Direct boot has however much leniency the other players in the game have. Like Ben said, if someone needs to be away longer than the boot time, the other players can choose to respect that and hold off on booting. The downside is that it can be used by one player or team to gain an advantage over another, since quite often one or more players rely on the presence of the booted player in some way or another.

Auto boot is in truth the most fair, but since it has zero tolerance you get booted even if every other player in the game is willing to wait.

I would support the idea of adding a "Full Direct Boot" where, as you say, you can only boot all players at once or none at all, but I don't think the current Direct Boot should be changed or removed.

Once again, each player has an equal opportunity to take advantage of the booting methods, and each player has equal opportunity to simply take their turn and avoid being booted at all. "Billy" is no less at fault than "Andrew".

*If you can't stand the idea of booting the guy on your own team, then maybe you shouldn't be booting the guy on the other team?*

Never do to anyone else anything that you would not want someone to do to you. ... how biblical :-)

I agree that booting individual players should not be impossible. It should be either "boot everyone who is over the limit simultaneously and let the game advance" or "boot noone and wait". Furthermore, in games with banking boot time, booting should be impossible unless all players who have not yet exceeded the limit have submitted their turn (else booting would again not serve it's only valid purpose: to advance the game).
I would even go as far as prohibit booting as long as even a single player is in vacation mode (for the same reason: it wouldn't help keep the game moving forward). Of course players in "overtime" shouldn't be allowed to go on vacation themselves though, for obvious reasons.

ouch

... should not be **possible** ...

I still disagree. Auto-boot solves the issue of one player being booted and another not being booted.

As for banking boot time, if the goal is to speed up the game, that would only be giving greater leniency to the players who more regularly keep everyone waiting. The idea behind banking boot time is that you earn the right to take longer time between turns now and then.

Say the boot time is 1 day. Player **A** averages 4 hours per turn on Monday-Thursday, but is unavailable on Friday-Sunday. Player **B** averages 20 hours per turn on Monday-Thursday, and is also unavailable Friday-Sunday. **A** has accumulated 80 hours of banked boot time, which means that they can stay off all weekend and still have plenty of time to take their turn on Monday. **B**, who regularly takes their turn long after everyone else, has accumulated 16 hours of banked boot time, which means they are forced to either take turns over the weekend or be booted. By only allowing **B** to be booted when **A** can be booted, **B** gets the full benefit of **A**'s banked boot time over the weekend, and is still able to severely slow down the game the rest of the week, which would completely negate the point that booting is intended to speed up the game. (My numbers are unrealistic, but focus on the concept.)

You are assuming the absence of A over the weekend is a given fact. However, B always has to worry whether or not A might cancel his weekend trip and submit his turn BEFORE monday. In that case, if A were to play say already Sunday evening, yet B was relying on A not returning before Monday morning, A can easily submit his turn and then - when he realizes 1) B is the only one holding up the game and 2) B is well over the boot time - boot B and thus submit 2 turns in a row.

Booting B before A has submitted his turn serves no other purpose but to damage the game for everyone else. In multiplayer team games, for example, booting one player usually means indirectly booting an entire team, or at least severely limit their chances to win (and their motivation to continue to play). Therefore booting should only happen if - at the very least there is the benefit of bringing the game forward, and be it only by a few hours. Booting without speeding up the game a single second is utterly pointless.

That was an example, it's not meant to fit every situation.

However, the possibility that **A** can take his or her turn early causing **B** to be boot-able is nothing less than placing a direct boot button solely in **A**'s hands, which is even worse than what the current complaint on direct booting is, because *only* **A** has the power to boot **B**. If any other player feels **B** should be booted, they have significantly less opportunity to do so. If **A** benefits from **B**'s presence in the game and chooses to give them more time for their turn, it is no different than only booting the player on the other team as occurred in the OP.

Also, to say that booting **B** doesn't speed up the game a single second is false. If you look at a single turn, this is true, but if you look at multiple turns, the game would speed up significantly. If the second slowest player, **A**, takes 2 turns every 4 hours, and you boot **B** who takes 2 turns every *20* hours, the game speed during the week suddenly jumps from 2.4 turns per day to 12 turns per day. Again, focus on the principle rather than the specifics.


Two simple facts: each player has equal opportunity to boot players who go over the timer, and each player has equal opportunity to take their turn before they go over the boot timer.

There will never be a boot setting that every single player will agree upon, and you guys are asking to alter a boot setting simply because you're on the side that doesn't like it. Again, I would support this being added as a boot setting in addition to the current 3, but not as a change to Direct Boot.

I'm okay with it being a new boot setting, actually. I think that team games should default to that kind of setting, though. I've seen it happen several times now, where someone from each team is late, and only one team gets booted. If no one from that team is around to boot the other person, then the teams become unbalanced.

I'm a big fan of reducing the ways in which the rules can be gamed. The rules are not the game, and no strategy should ever rely on the boot mechanics. I want to play against the people who signed up for the game, not the rules themselves.

@emoose:
Yes, in banking boot time games the player with the most banked boot time would have the ultimate say in whether or not to boot a slow player, at least if he chose to spend his banked time on delaying the current turn to wait for all other players to submit their turns before him. And why not? For the sake of argument, add another player C to that scenario above. C plays only slightly quicker than B and has banked 17 hours of boot time. Now on what grounds should he be able to boot B? Because, on average, he played 12 minutes quicker than B? Or shouldn't it be rather A's call, from whose perspective B and C are almost equally slow players? And what would stop C from playing quicker and banking more boot time than player A, if he so eagerly wants to boot others?